Life after Chess for Garry

Life After Chess
Former champ Garry Kasparov still sees the world in terms of pawns and kings—and thinks you should, too.

By Steven Levy NEWSWEEK
Feb 25, 2008 Issue
Updated: 6:28 p.m. ET Feb 15, 2008

No one, ever, was a greater master of the chessboard than Garry Kasparov, whose 22-year reign as world champion set a standard for dominance. During his time at the top, Kasparov made his mark outside the competitive arena as well, working constantly to bolster the popularity of the game and especially arguing for its place in the computer era. (It was an act of bravery for him—and a net gain for chess—to take on IBM‘s Deep Blue machine in 1997, a match he lost. To this day, he contends that IBM gave its machine timely human guidance, a charge IBM has denied.)

In retirement, Kasparov, now 44, is taking on an even more formidable foe in his native Russia: Vladimir Putin. Kasparov aborted his run for Russian president late last year, but remains one of the most vocal dissidents in the land. Recently the former champ, who retired in 2005, wrote “How Life Imitates Chess,” a book that tries to apply the lessons of the game to business scenarios and other life situations. NEWSWEEK caught up with the chess legend—a gregarious, witty conversationalist who puts the lie to chess wizards as antisocial wonks—in a New York-to-Moscow Skype call.

Levy: Using chess terms, describe your current political situation.

Kasparov: Chess probably is not the best comparison, because in chess we are all playing by the rules. This regime refused to play by the rules for many years. The only good sign lately was that they had to make one legal move, which is to decide Putin’s future, and this is the move that you cannot take back. [By law, Putin could not continue in his post and chose bureaucrat Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.] Putin was not ready to break up with the Constitution, because he has been paying attention to the Western reaction, and all the money of the ruling elite is in the West. No matter what you say and what you put on paper, it’s real life, and if you put anybody in your position, this stooge, this nobody, becomes a big man. The chair makes you big. I mean, who was Putin eight years ago? Nobody. But the chair creates an aura of invincibility. His move creates a new situation, which might offer certain promising terms for us. Being chess-y about it, for more than a year we were playing with the threat of being mated in one, and managing to survive. We’re still at the board. The game is not over. We think that in 2008 we can start thinking, not one move ahead but two moves ahead, we can have a luxury, because the regime shows a lot of cracks. If you travel around Russia, not staying in the center of Moscow only, you can definitely sense that things are not looking good.

He tried to dismiss your influence because you voiced your complaints to outsiders.

Putin mentions the name of only one of his opponents—mine. It doesn’t make me a very happy man, but it shows that the concept of The Other Russia [an anti-Putin coalition], of the unified opposition, bothers him very much. He talked about Kasparov and about these bad guys who are trying to provoke the police and be arrested.

Here is the full interview.